In a Winter Month
by justreading4fun
Summary: Natasha and Clint need a little help. Cue team.
1. Chapter 1

**Based on this prompt at avengers assemble**: _Sometimes S.H.I.E.L.D. borrows Clint or Natasha for missions other agents aren't qualified to do. The Avengers aren't too pleased with the state S.H.I.E.L.D. returns them in. _

_Clint and Natasha!whump with the rest of the team taking care of them._

**Disclaimer: **I do not own any property related to The Avengers._  
_

**Pairings:** Natasha/Clint, Tony/Pepper(But don't hold your breath for any hot romance.)

**Characters:** Will include all The Avengers by the end. And an OC.

**Warnings:** Spoilers for the movie. Rated T for habitual use of profanity, hint of drug usage, and other assorted adult concepts.

**Author's Notes: **I want to apologize up front to any of the following parties which might be poorly represented in this fic: people who understand computer coding, people who practice medicine, the elderly, numerous belief systems, people who have been shot and _really_ know what it feels like, people hoping for structured sentences, people who speak native Lithuanian, people who speak Russian, and the entire population of the Republic of Lithuania.

I would like to thank my co-authors: Bing Translator, Microsoft Word Spell Check, and various websites on the Republic of Lithuania.

Thanks so much for reading!

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In a Winter Month

by justreading4fun

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**Republic of Lithuania**

**Palanga**

**December 20th, 2012**

**3:00 a.m.**

Natasha and Clint are hidden away in a crumbling shack of a safe house, tucked in a rugged, overgrown corner of Palanga, where sand and wild grass meet pine trees.

The old woman who owns the house is named Jadvyga.

It is said that she lost her husband and two oldest sons many, many, years ago, to the honorable uprising of Lithuanian partisans against Soviet rule.

"_Berniukai," she once told Natasha during a previous stay._

_Boys, her sons that died so long ago. Not men. They were only boys._

She has a third son, one she was pregnant with when her husband died, but she has not seen this third son since he was twenty and grew tired of the coastal town and left her alone.

Natasha is unsure of how this very old woman became a concealer of international spies and assassins but this shack of hers is one of Natasha and Clint's favorite places to be when they have to lay low in Northern Europe. Natasha is appreciative of the beach and sea air and the isolation while Clint is fond of Jadvyga's cooking and the way she dotes on him. The old woman is convinced that he is the reincarnation of one of her murdered sons and Clint humors Jadvyga with excessive affection and compliments and when they happen to stay with her during a warmer month, displays of his archery skills.

But it is not warm today.

It is a bone chilling -11.1 degrees Celsius outside and the sky has been grey and dull since they first arrived in crisis late yesterday afternoon. And while Jadvyga has a generous fire burning in the stone hearth that compensates for the draftier corners of the small home, a storm is threatening all around them and the wind surrounds the shack with rattles and whistles. The noise has Natasha feeling dark and ill at ease, as if it is Mother Nature's way of signaling impending doom.

Beside her, semi-asleep on an old couch, is Clint, wrapped in two blankets but still shivering.

It doesn't matter how much wood they put on the fire, it won't help Clint feel the warmth.

His body is fighting the beginnings of an infection, the unwelcomed after-thought of a bullet that dug its way through muscle into his chest yesterday morning.

He moans a single word too low for his partner to interpret and then, just as quick, he returns to silence.

Maybe he's dreaming.

"Shhhhh," Natasha whispers into his ear, and then in Russian she tells him, "CoH."

Sleep.

She waits until she can tell for sure that he has, before she closes her eyes.

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**The United States**

**New York City**

**December 19, 2012**

**8:00 p.m.**

"Is anyone comfortable with this?" Tony asks Steve, Bruce, and Pepper over dinner.

Steve pierces a piece of steak and seeks clarification. "Comfortable with what? This steakhouse? Heck, yeah. Best piece of meat I've had in well over sixty- something years."

"Okay, no, not your dinner, thank you for that input and ...image," Tony says, not trying to hide his impatience. "Comfortable with...let's try, maybe, I don't know, the whole not hearing from Katniss and Buffalo Bill for two weeks."

"I really, really, don't think Barton appreciates that nickname," Bruce chimes in, before pouring himself a second glass of wine. "And I dare you to call Natasha that to her face."

"Well, whatever," Tony says. "The point being, something is not right. I have no factual basis for this conclusion or tangible theories, but I intend on finding one, because I'm telling you, something is not right."

Pepper sighs. "I'm sure everything's fine."

"Really?" Tony asks, twirling his fork at her. "And aren't you supposed to be at the theater tonight with a certain Black Widow and remind me again why you aren't?"

Pepper patiently blinks at him. Translation: Calm down, crazy man.

"Oh, wait," Tony continues. "I remember now. You aren't at the theater because...aforementioned Widow is...missing."

"She's not missing," Pepper counters. "She's busy doing things which I, for one, do not want to know what."

Tony puts his fork down. "Busy being...misplaced? Astray?" He looks stone still at Pepper and says in an unusually serious tone, "Abducted? Dead?"

Steve glances around the noisy, crowded steakhouse to make sure no one is paying attention to the conversation before he assures Tony, "I'm sure that they haven't contacted us because protocol forbids it."

"Well, you know what?" Tony says, his voice tight and controlled, "Fuck protocol and fuck procedure and fuck all this covert bullshit. Something is wrong. They've never been gone this long without contacting at least one of us. "

As if to solidify his conclusions, he stands up abruptly, taking turns glaring at each one of them and his fingers tapping on the back of his chair. An unsaid look of, 'And I know the rest of you agree with me whether or not you are willing to admit it out loud.'

Pepper glances wistfully at her remaining food, calls for the waiter, arranges to-go boxes, and then summons the car.

So much for a quiet evening out on the town.

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Jadvyga carefully hands Natasha a piping hot cup of tea. It has a distinctive taste, like tea from no other region and every time they come here, Natasha tries to remember to bring a little home, although she never does.

They are always in a hurry, she and Clint, whenever they have to leave this peaceful place.

"Grietinėlė?" Jadvyga says quietly, lifting the cream towards Natasha, asking if she wants more.

"Ne," Natasha shakes her head. She smiles at the old woman, "No, thank you."

Their exchanges tend to consist of just a few words. Neither Natasha nor Clint is fluent in Jadvyga's native Lithuanian.

But hand signals all three of them have mastered and Jadvyga puts that particular skill set to action by pointing to Clint, making a drinking motion, and then pointing back to Clint.

"Tai bus gera karščiavimas," the old woman says, waving her finger in Clint's direction.

Natasha doesn't catch it all, but she does make out the word, 'fever', so she assumes that Jadvyga must be telling her to give Clint some of the tea.

She nods.

Although she hates to wake Clint up, the old woman is probably right in the sense that Clint should take in some fluids. Maybe even try and eat something.

Satisfied that Natasha has understood her, Jadvyga returns to the kitchen and her self-appointed task of fixing everyone breakfast.

With some distance between them and the old woman, Natasha is comfortable using real names instead of their alias. She nudges Clint's shoulder and when he doesn't respond to the movement she says softly, "Clint. Time to wake up."

There's still no response.

He's lying on the couch, curled into a compact crescent to compensate for the lack of leg space, with his head on her lap. She forks her fingers through his short hair, in his favor spot, directly above his ear.

"Clint."

He finally stopped shivering a few hours ago in the very early morning and despite the fact that he has a bullet hole in him, he actually looks somewhat peaceful and she feels guilty, forcing him into consciousness.

But she should check his bandage and he needs to drink something.

"Barton. I need you to wake up."

The use of his last name triggers a reflexive awareness and he lifts a hand to an eye, rubs at it with a fist, and asks groggily, "Time to move?"

'Move,' is code for resume their mission and she has to give Clint some points for his optimism for even thinking that 'moving' is an option.

Sitting him upright is the immediate goal.

"Come on," she says, scooting over so she can assist him to a sitting position. "Time to get up. Go slow."

He's a bit shaky and clearly still confused. Now that he's up, she sees that his sleeping position and blankets were hiding the full effect of a day's worth of blood loss and fever. He's pale, his cheeks flushed, and his white T-shirt spotted with a dried red inkblot on the right side of his chest several inches below his collarbone.

By sheer luck there doesn't seem to be any lung damage but the bullet wound had bled a lot after the initial shooting and even more due to the impromptu surgery she had to conduct in a freezing, vacant building, free of anything to dull the pain and with nothing more than a small bottle of perfume to serve as a sterilizing agent on her sharp knife. She had bandaged the wound as carefully as possible but left it open, even now, after she has gotten a chance to properly clean it hours later at the safe house, because she knows there's a fragment or two still lodged in Clint and she can turn off her emotions, sure, but not even Natasha can bring herself to be numb enough to dig around his chest for pin-size slivers of lead without a proper anesthetic.

_Hands covered in his blood, the cuffs of her shirt saturated red with it._

_Trying so hard to keep as steady as humanly possible. Trying not to hurt him. But that's impossible._

_"It's okay. It's okay, Clint. I almost have it."_

_"Fuck, Nat. Just get the damn thing out. Just fuckin' cut."_

_His left foot pounding up and down on the dirty concrete. Anything to try and alleviate the pain. Anything to distract himself from screaming and revealing their location._

_"It's, okay," she said, slowly easing the bloody bullet out of his chest with the tip of her knife. "See? I got it. It's okay. You're okay. __Это делается. Это делается.__"_

_It's done. It's done._

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Hours after Tony forced an early ending to dinner, he's throwing a small rubber ball against the back wall of one his mini-labs that nobody knows about but Pepper and the twenty-two year old currently sitting at one of the nine flat-top plasma projection screens in the laboratory.

"How we doin' there, Sport?" he asks the kid. "Because last time I checked, you told me fifteen minutes tops and that was…what … seventy-two freaking minutes ago?"

BAAM! Goes the ball against the wall and then back into Tony's hand.

"I'm almost there, Mr. S," the kid tells him and Tony hates that he calls him Mr. S but the kid, Jerry, is a hacking wunderkind who was born with a right hand called encryption and a left hand named decryption and the two of them are flying across the plasma projection screen's keyboard like competing hockey teams.

BLIP

Tony's head pivots immediately to the screen Jerry is working on because that BLIP is distinctly different from the thousand other noises that have signaled failure in the last seventy-two minutes.

This is a happy BLIP.

This BLIP results in Tony walking over to Jerry and placing a hand on the young man's shoulder and telling him, "Jerry, go ahead and put a bid on that ocean front property you were telling me about."

Jerry smiles.

And Tony does too. Because staring back at him and Jerry, in beautiful 3-D loveliness, is the S.H.I.E.L.D . homepage.

Bingo.

"Jarvis, assist Jerry out. And transfer the funds I previously discussed to his account."

Tony turns to Jerry and asks the kid, "What's our first rule, Jerry?"

Jerry smiles. He knows this one. "Keep my mouth shut or be thrown off Stark Tower. No witnesses. Except you, because you'll be the one doing the throwing."

"That's correct," Tony applauds. "And what's our second rule?"

Jerry continues smiling. He knows this one too. He tells Tony on his way out of the lab, "Do not spend all the money I just earned on the Wacky Weed."

"Excellent."

Tony waits for the door to shut and then he interlocks his hands, cracks his knuckles, and fans his fingers in gleeful anticipation before beginning to surf the S.H.I.E.L.D. website for secrets.

Red Rover, Red Rover, send the Widow's and Barton's current mission on over.

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Natasha lifts the cup of cooling tea to Clint's lips. He reaches for it but she halts his attempts to hold it himself with a simple, "Stop."

He could hold it, yes, but she doesn't feel like taking the chance of his only fully functioning hand spilling any of it on his person, so she waits until the cup has lost a little of its volume before placing it in his left hand.

He's barely moved his right arm and Natasha asks him if she should maybe put it in a sling. Would that be better? Would it make his chest hurt less?

Clint shakes his head 'no' and takes several more sips of tea.

"Do you think you can make it to the kitchen table?" Natasha asks him. "Jadvyga has made us breakfast."

Clint blows out a small sigh and looks in the direction of the kitchen.

The sound of a table being set filters back into the living room. Old china on worn wood, silverware's contact dulled by well washed cloth napkins.

"I'm not really hungry, Tasha" Clint tells her. "Maybe by lunch."

Natasha considers his answer and then begins negotiations.

"Maybe now. Maybe some breakfast," she says. "It's oatmeal. Plain. Nothing too greasy. It'll be good to get a little food in your system."

He hasn't eaten since breakfast yesterday, most of which was vomited up during and after the impromptu surgery.

"Come on," she encourages him. "Just a little. Enough to make Jadvyga feel better. She spent half the night praying for you."

Clint nods. He knows Natasha is right. He needs to eat something. And the old woman, it's a small gesture to repay her for his safety and her concern.

"You need to drink more," Natasha tells him. "Tea, water, both. I don't care. But something, alright?"

Clint nods again.

He's so quiet and that's not helping Natasha's dark mood. She'd rather have him bitching up a storm or complaining than be so pliant.

She stands up and then waits for him to copy her effort, reaching out to assist him.

He manages it in one attempt but before they begin walking to the kitchen, he leans over and puts his forehead against hers.

She places a single hand on his face, her palm cupping his chin, her fingers absorbing the heat from his cheek.

He's too quiet. He's becoming too warm.

"We're good," she tells him, pretending her words are solely to assure him and not herself. "You just need a little food and a few days. Then we'll finish this and go home."

Clint doesn't say anything. He just stays pressed against her.

"Kaip," Jadvyga eventually calls to them from the kitchen.

Come.

"Valgyti."

Eat.

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Thanks to Jerry and compliments of hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. files, Tony knows a lot more information than he did a half an hour ago.

For instance, he knows that Natasha and Clint left for an undercover tour of Northern Europe which in fact is an extension of a two year undercover job that they have been periodically fulfilling for S.H.I.E.L.D. as a Mr. and Mrs. John and Victoria Fletcher, second tier weapons dealers.

As an added bonus, John has jet black hair, nine tattoos, a platinum stud earring in his left ear, and Tony can't wait to mock the hell out of that shit to Barton. Jesus, who's in charge of this incognito crap at S.H.I.E.L.D. and how much would Clint probably pay to have Tony kill them? Barton with an earring. Heh.

Victoria is a blond, and well, the thought of seeing Natasha as a blond is nothing to mock, so Tony decides in advance that he'll keep his possibly embarrassing physical reaction to a blond Black Widow to himself.

Tony has also learned that his two teammates are in Lithuania and that something went seriously wrong in Vilnius, the nation's capital, and Clint got shot, although even S.H.I.E.L.D. appears to be sketchy on the finer details of that clusterfuck. And in typical S.H.I.E.L.D. and assassin fashion, neither the agency nor the agents appear to want to declare the mission a failure. Evidently everyone is content with Plan B, which consists of passing a few days in a remote safe house and let Clint heal up enough to finish the job.

Tony can't help but come to the conclusion that no one has considered Plan C, which is an invention of his own, which involves his friends being hunted down and killed and thus die, because, after all, Clint is SHOT and not exactly able to defend himself or have his partner's back completely and that's not cool and it's not going to happen on Tony's watch.

So, if everyone directly involved lacks the common sense to put an end to the situation, well then, it's up to him.

Plan D.

Tony has assigned himself his own little S.H.I.E.L.D. mission and at this moment, he's trying to sneak out of his penthouse to get started on it.

"Where are you going?" Pepper asks, putting a halt to his escape.

Tony clumsily juggles the small duffle bag he's holding into his other hand.

"Huh?" he asks, feigning innocence.

Translation: Leave me alone woman!

"Where are you going?"

"Ummmm," Tony vacillates. "I thought I would, you know, step out. Just, I don't know. Fresh air."

"At one-fifteen in the morning?" Pepper asks skeptically. "With an overnight bag and dressed in your Ironman suit. Really? Fresh air is the best you could come up with?"

"Well," Tony reasons. "I'm not going to stay in the suit. I'm ditching it when I get to the jet."

"Wow," Pepper says, approaching him, hands on her hips. "As long as you're taking it off when you get to the jet, I guess that explains everything. It all makes sense now. I'm ashamed of myself, that I even questioned your leaving."

"I can't be tamed," he shrugs, flipping open his mask, sauntering over to her, and puckering up for a kiss. "I'm a wild creature."

A little smooch will smooth things over.

"Where are you really going?" she asks, withholding the kiss.

"I can't tell you that," he responds, before taking the initiative himself of seeking out a kiss and when he breaks the contact with her lips, he winks at Pepper and says, "It'd be a breach of protocol."

"Oh," she nods. "And suddenly you're all about the protocol, Mr. Fuck Protocol and Procedure?"

"Sir," Jarvis interrupts, "I've arranged for the IV fluids, blood, and antibiotics to be delivered to the jet within the next ten minutes. All very discrete, of course."

Pepper stares wide-eyed at Tony.

"Blood?" she asks.

Tony shakes his head. Great. Well done, Jarvis. That won't stir up the Pepper Potts pot any further. Not at all.

"Thanks, for that, buddy," he mumbles. "That's very stealthy of you."

He attempts a hasty exit, but Pepper is hot on his heels.

"Tony. Blood? IV fluids? Tell me what's happening."

He stops long enough to promise her that everything is perfectly fine, but actually, not yet fine, but everything will be and she just needs to trust him because everything works out, usually, seriously, usually it does and she knows that, right? She totally knows that. Hell, he saved the world from an alien invasion, well, he had some help, but this is a simple thing he's about to do. He's good solo.

So…no, he can't and won't tell her what he's doing.

But Pepper, his perfect Pepper, she totally already has it mostly figured out with his whole protocol play on words and all and she knows he isn't coming clean with the few details she hasn't quite nailed down so they both settle on an unstated understanding when she says, "Be careful. Call me when you can."

"Absolutely," he answers. "Gotta' fly, Sweets."

"Bring them home," she says, not mentioning any names.

And Tony tells her, "That's what the jet is for."

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To be continued…


	2. Chapter 2

Please see the first chapter for disclaimers and warnings. There be movie spoilers in these waters.

I want to thank everyone for reading and reviewing. I've had a lovely response to this story. Truly appreciated.

Hopefully this chapter will not disappoint. Just some h/c filler and exposition.

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In a Winter Month

Chapter 2

by justreading4fun

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**Palanga**

**December 20, 2012**

**8:30 a.m.**

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Clint makes it for ten minutes at the kitchen table before he stops the pretense of actually attempting to eat his oatmeal.

"Ne," Jadvyga, shakes her head in a 'no' motion. "Daugiau."

More.

She wants him to eat more.

Jadvyga points an index finger at him and rattles off a few fast sentences in her native tongue, most of which is lost to Natasha. But the old woman's message is pretty clear.

She's not happy with Clint's minimal efforts at eating breakfast.

"I don't think you're excused from the table yet," Natasha quips at him.

Clint looks miserable. Actually, he looks a little like he's about to be sick to his stomach. Natasha recalls an American phrase that used to confuse her when she first learned the language. Green around the gills. Yes, that's what he looks like right now. A unique grey-greenish.

He throws a glance of desperation in her direction.

Translation: Nat, please. Save me from this woman.

But Natasha will not save him. Not when she agrees with Jadvyga. Clint only ate three spoonfuls of oatmeal. They were hardly heaping.

"Uhhh," Clint tells Jadvyga, "I just don't… This is very good, it tastes good," he says, pointing to the oatmeal. He smiles at her. "Very good. But I don't feel well."

Jadvyga stares uncomprehending at him.

Clint runs his left hand through his hair and attempts an edited version of his excuse.

"больна," he tells Jadvyga, Russian for 'sick.'

The old woman continues to stare at him.

"Bolnav," he says, this time resorting to Romanian.

Jadvyga just blinks and then rattles off a few more very abrupt sentences and it's Clint's turn to just sit there confused.

"I'm sorry...I don't...I don't understand you. Ne suprasti," Clint tells Jadvyga before turning to Natasha and saying, "As amusing as I am sure this is for you, I'm out of Eastern European languages. Can you please help me out here? Tell her what I'm trying to say."

"Nope," Natasha answers, taking a small bite of her toast. "I agree with her. You need to eat more."

Clint drops his head to the table and rests it in the crux of his left elbow.

Natasha sneaks a peek at him.

He really looks awful. He's sweaty, pale, quite frankly a little smelly, and now the shivering from last night is starting again. He still hasn't touched the glasses of juice or water in front of him.

"Tell you what," Natasha says, taking pity on him. "If you drink the water, I'll bail you out of any more oatmeal."

Clint reaches for the glass.

After a few sips he puts it down and shakes his head, "I can't drink anymore right now. I'm gonna' be sick."

Jadvyga stands up with her bowl and takes it to the sink. When she returns to the table, she goes over to Clint and places a hand on his forehead.

She's never really touched either one of them before, certainly nothing as intimate as this. She tends to keep a few feet of distance at all times.

Clint sort of freezes at the contact, his body stiffening a bit.

"Per karšta," she tells Natasha, her hand remaining on him.

Too hot.

" Taip," Natasha nods. Yes.

Jadvyga fishes a plastic rosary out of her apron pocket, puts both hands on the top of Clint's head, and rattles off a prayer. Whether it's out of respect for the old woman or he's simply too tired to protest, Clint sits still through the entire thing, tolerating it.

When she finishes the prayer, Jadvyga breaks the contact and returns to the sink, running the water and beginning the process of cleaning the breakfast dishes.

"We're not putting that in the report," Clint mutters.

"What?" Natasha jokes." You don't think that's important information for S.H.I.E.L.D. to know? I think she may have just baptized you. Or delivered last rites. Maybe both."

Clint ignores her, braces himself with his good hand on the table and slowly stands up."I'm gonna' go lay down for a little while."

Natasha follows him into the living room. She needs to check his bandage, take his temperature, and give him some more of the liquid pain reliever. It's the only thing they have that can make a dent in the fever.

When they reach the couch, Natasha waits until he has eased himself down onto it before she gently raises his T-shirt. She peels back the bandage and grimaces at the sight of bullet wound. It's puffy and red, hot to the touch, yellowish discharge is present, and it's clearly infected.

"Clint," she tells him softly, "This isn't looking good. It's definitely infected."

"It'll be fine for a few days," is all he says, his head resting on the back of the couch, his eyes closed.

Natasha sighs. He's so fucking stubborn.

She should not have to be here in this living room, trying to deal with this severe of an injury. They shouldn't have been allowed to continue this mission. They've had two handlers since Phil, and neither one of them have had even the most remote idea how to control Clint. He's like an injured athlete. He can't be trusted to make the right decisions if he's hurt. He needs to be pulled from the game, not given an option to stay in it. Someone needs to tell Clint no, because left to his own devices, he'll never say it himself.

She tries to be as gentle as possible as she cleans the wound and replaces the bandage. Clint barely moves the entire time and if she has caused him any pain, he isn't showing it. When she's done, she slowly pulls his shirt down to his jeans and steps back.

He's almost asleep but still shivering.

He looks about the same as he did in the kitchen, sickly and pale and trembling, just a little less conscious.

He's a fucking mess.

There's traces of residual blood crusted all over him, on his jeans, and peeking out the top of his shirt, and random blood sticking to his hair and stubborn flecks of it slinking out on his under arms and forearms and especially, in the corners of his fingernails, although Natasha did try and scrub them clean yesterday once they got to Jadvyga's.

She's been assuming his extreme lethargy was from the fever zapping his energy, but she wonders now, if she's overlooking just how much blood he lost yesterday.

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_There was just so much of it, so much blood after he was initially shot, and the flow didn't truly slow to a trickle until Natasha finally stopped the car halfway between Vilnius and Palanga and warned Clint that if they didn't properly clean and bandage his bullet wound, right there, right now, he was a fucking idiot who deserved to lose the use of his arm and maybe his life._

_Harsh, in retrospect._

_Her words had probably been a little too harsh._

_But it got his attention and he'd agreed to their pulling off the road long enough for her to administer what limited medical care she could provide._

_Natasha drove the rental car to a section of pavement that tourists often parked at in the summer time in order to eat a packed lunch and enjoy the scenery. Get away from the steady stream of beach traffic for a while._

_Of course, it was December. So they were the only parked car and that was a good thing. Natasha left the motor running and the heat on high and settled Clint in the back seat horizontally and dumped what few supplies she had grabbed at gunpoint from a Vilnius pharmacy out of her backpack and onto the passenger's seat._

_Three plastic bottles of rubbing alcohol._

_A digital ear thermometer._

_Rolled gauze._

_Medical tape._

_Boxes and boxes of large, square gauze bandages._

_Mouthwash, because he had vomited and would appreciate it._

_Six bottles of liquid cold medicine that promised a fever reduce kicker._

_Five tubes of anti-bacteria ointment._

_A bottle of pills she was pretty sure were the Lithuania equivalent of Advil._

_And lastly, a bag of cherry lollipops with gum in the center because they were his favorite non-food and she knew he loved them and shit, she had just recently tortured him for almost ten agonizing minutes while she played hide and go seek with a knife in his chest._

_Where are you bullet?_

_Come out and play._

_And not once in that abandoned building in Vilnius had Clint lost control or screamed or begged her to stop or told her to call an ambulance to carry his ass out of there to a hospital and ruin two years of an undercover operation or do anything but urge Natasha through gritted teeth to keep cutting into him and he deserved a goddamn lollipop for all that, so she stole him a whole bag of em'._

_She opened up the bag, unwrapped a single lollipop and placed it in his hand._

_He stared at her, then the lollipop, and said with a goofy grin, "Cool. Thanks, Tasha," and popped it into his mouth. _

_He sounded high as a kite._

_Then he laid his head back against the car window and closed his eyes and endured the next half hour, as Natasha sliced away the last of his already ruined undershirt and poured an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol into the post-knife-surgery bullet wound and packed it with anti-bacterial ointment and wrapped it up in a pretty white cotton package of thready gauze and medical tape. _

_His eyes remained closed as she took his pulse. A little too fast for his normally lower rate._

"_Are you dizzy, Clint?" she asked him, worried that he still seemed so out of it._

"_I'm good now. It was worse right after I got shot," he answered, and then finished her line of thought with, "My head's pounding but that's all. I'm fine."_

_Evidently he had already done the checklist for shock and determined he was out of the woods._

_But as his headache attested to, there were other complications from blood loss._

_She gave the medical tape around his chest one final tug to make sure it was secured and then sat back. They had no extra clothes. All of the luggage was in their hotel room in Vilnius and they couldn't go back there. At least not until things calmed down. Everyone would be looking for them in the city, both the good and the bad guys._

_They have a few back-up outfits that they stash at all the safe houses scattered across the globe and when they get to Palanga__, the problem of extra clothing will be solved. But in the car, with no options, Natasha left Clint shirtless, tucking in both of their jackets around him to try and retain his body heat. She turned to collect what was left of the medical supplies, but stopped when she felt him grab her wrist and she allowed him to pull her close to him._

_He opened his eyes and looked at her for the first since she started tending to him. _

"_You were amazing today, Nat. When things went sour at the meet up, and digging the bullet out, and getting what we needed, and getting us the hell out of town and just now…"_

_His sentence drifted off._

_He held her closer and whispered, "Thank you for taking care of me. We can still do this. The meeting with Novikov isn't until the 22rd. We can still get our shit together and eliminate our objective. Just give me a day or two to rest."_

_They spent a few minutes like that, Clint holding onto her and Natasha trying not to lean too heavily into his chest because the last thing she wanted to do was cause him more pain. But it felt good to just do nothing for a moment, just not be frantic, and it always felt right and it never got old, being held by him. _

"_We should take a nap," he suggested and from the far-away sound of his voice, he was already starting on one. _

_To be honest, she was surprised his body had held off this long._

_He should sleep. But for the sake of both of them, she couldn't afford to._

"_We have to keep going," she said, breaking away from him._

_Then it was back to business, handing Clint five of the probably Advil and forcing him to stay awake long enough to drink a third of a bottle of water they had left in the car. _

_She used a good portion of the remaining water to wash his blood from her hands, so she could drive the rental car the rest of the way to __Palanga without constantly sticking to the steering wheel._

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In the early afternoon, the days-long of threatening weather finally boils over into a brutal burst of freezing rain.

Clint is on the couch. Jadvyga is sitting near him, keeping watch and saying some more of her prayers. He slept for five hours after breakfast and woke up about thirty minutes ago, promising Natasha that he would be ready to eat some lunch if she just gave him a little time to shake the residual drowsiness of the nap.

Natasha is sitting at the kitchen table using her laptop, reviewing the notes she has on the remaining players in this fucked up chess match of a mission they find themselves in. She's wondering which of the secondary scumbags she should contact next in order to reinsert herself and Clint back into the game so they can get close enough to kill their primary target, international arms dealer Pavel Novikov, and be done with this fucking operation once and for all.

She stands up to stretch and finds herself wandering in the general direction of the living room to check on Clint. As she walks, she glances warily up at the decrepit slanted ceiling and wonders if the shack's roof can withstand the battering ice pellets' violent attack on it.

Jadvyga seems completely unfazed by nature's assault on her home. She's enthusiastically reading an article from what appears to be a six-month-old newspaper to a yawning Clint. Jadvyga finishes the article and releases a boisterous laugh.

"Ozkos! Galite jus manote, kad?" she chuckles at him.

Clint is sitting up, Leaning Tower of Pisa style, propped by three sagging pillows, and yes, although he may be listing to one side, he is, nonetheless, sitting up and not flat on his back, and he has a loopy smile on his face as he watches the old woman laugh.

"Hey," Natasha greets them, joining them in the living room. "What's so funny?"

It's good to see him smiling, but Natasha's inwardly frustrated with him, because the glass of water she poured for him when he woke up from his nap, and specifically told him to drink, is still sitting on the side table, untouched.

Clint Barton, the same person who is constantly on Tony Stark's back to drink less alcohol and more water, is suddenly the Sahara Desert of shooting victims.

"Hell if I know whatzo funny," Clint says, still grinning at the laughing Jadvyga, his words slurring a bit together. "I think a tourist was bitten by a goat but it may have been the other way around. I'm only translating about one word for every ten."

"Taip. Ozku!" Jadvyga nods in approval, beaming at him with pride.

Yes. Goat.

"Well, there you go," confirms Clint. "There is definitely a goat involved."

Jadvyga stands up and motions for Natasha, leading her further into the living room, over to Clint, and points at his ear, looking up at Natasha in anticipation. She forms a gun with her finger, but that can't be right, a gun doesn't make sense, and Natasha realizes that the old lady isn't suggesting that they put Clint out of his misery with a bullet, but rather reminding Natasha that it's time to take his temperature again.

This morning's dose of over-the-counter liquid cold medicine only lasts so long, and evidently Jadvyga is convinced that its cone of effectiveness as a fever reducer has worn off.

Clint may be sitting up, but he looks like he's ready to fall over. The man is starting to wilt. The closely clipped hair around his ears and temples and forehead is still slightly moist with sweat and Natasha suspects that the back of his neck is fairing no better. His face is a contrast of unnatural pale and rosebud red cheeks.

He desperately needs a shower when he's feeling well enough.

Maybe before then.

And now that Natasha is really, really taking a second to notice the small things, she sees Clint blinking more frequently than usual, his personal tell that his head is hurting.

Before she gets the thermometer she asks him, "Do you still have that headache from yesterday?"

"Huh?" he asks, lolling his head in her general direction.

"Do you still have a headache?" she repeats. "Remember? You had one in the car. You haven't said anything, so I thought it was gone."

"What?"

"Does your head hurt?"

He doesn't answer.

Something's not right.

She kneels down at the foot of the couch and puts both of her hands on his cheeks.

Shit.

He's burning up.

"Ozku means goat," he tells her, with that loopy grin still on his face. "And I totally have no idea how I know that. I mean, that's ridiculous, right? Of all the words for me to know."

"Yes. That's ridiculous," she fakes a smile to humor him and pushes back his hair, angling his head so that she can gain his full attention.

He's eyes are watery, glassy. He's looking in her general direction, but she's not entirely sure he's seeing her. This is not good.

"Hey!" she says sharply, "Look at me. You need to focus. We need to take your temperature. And you need to fucking drink some water. Do you understand me? When's the last time you even peed? You barely ate any breakfast, and why didn't you tell me that you were getting sicker? Jesus, could you be any more irresponsible?"

Well, of course he can. He's a man after all.

He doesn't respond to her tirade.

He doesn't reach for the water or answer her question about the whole peeing thing or make any attempt to engage her in conversation.

He just sits there.

Light's on but nobody is home.

Jadvyga has taken it upon herself to retrieve the thermometer and she tentatively offers it to Natasha, stepping away from the two of them the moment Natasha takes it from her.

"Ačiū," Natasha tells her.

Thank you.

Jadvyga continues her retreat until she is lingering on the threadbare carpet border of the living room and kitchen areas. She appears to be content to be a spectator.

Natasha tilts Clint's head slightly to the left and inserts the thermometer into his ear.

She pushes down the button and waits for it to ding.

"You need to drink some water," she lowers her voice so only he can hear her. "Every damn drop in that glass, I mean it Clint, or so help me I will contact headquarters right now and pull us from this operation because you are starting to scare me. At this rate, you'll never make it back out that door for a second try at our target. Your body is shutting down."

Bing.

The thermometer comes to life indicating it has determined Clint's current roasting temp.

39.4 degrees Celsius.

Isn't that just great.

Almost two full degrees higher than this morning.

The fever is gaining a footing too fast. There have to be lead slivers from that damn bullet still buried in his chest, she sure of it now and Clint's body is infected and it's cooking him from the inside out and now is the time for this experiment to end.

Everything is spiraling and she wants Coulson to be alive, because Phil was never one to fuck around and he would have hauled their asses off this operation the minute Clint was shot. Coulson wouldn't have left it up to Natasha and Clint to decide if they could put Clint's health at risk in order to salvage two long years of their undercover work and all those thousands of man hours of behind the scenes research conducted by various agents.

Coulson would have said to hell with the two years, it's not worth risking Clint, and he would have cut the losses and pulled the plug without question. Clint would have had surgery in a sterile environment on some military base and woken up healthy and in a pissy mood, cussing up bloody murder about what an asshole move it was, for Phil, to not allow Clint to decide if he was healthy enough to continue with the mission.

If Phil Coulson were alive, they would not be in this living room.

Enough of this nonsense.

"Clint," Natasha keeps her voice low and controlled. "Listen to me. You have a fever of 103 degrees. You need a hospital. You need a doctor. You need antibiotics. You probably need surgery and a blood transfusion. You definitely need fluids and you need all of these things right now. I trust you. You trust me. That's why we work. And I need you to trust me at this moment and agree with me to make a call to Fury. No one else. Just Fury. And he will get us out of here because given all current information available, that is our best option for a successful outcome. You are in no condition to continue this mission. Remember what Coulson taught us. Go with facts, not feelings. Stay alive."

Something has recaptured Clint's attention and dusted off a layer of his previous listlessness.

He locks eyes with her.

"Do not bring Phil into this!" he says harshly. "Do not fucking do that to me."

Natasha bites the bottom of her lip, a long ago ceased nervous childhood habit.

"Это не время для боя," she whispers under her breath to him.

This is not the time for a fight.

"What would you have me do?" she asks him, trying to keep her voice calm."I will not watch you die. Staying here is foolish."

Clint breaks the eye contact and reaches for the glass of water.

She helps him.

It's slow going, but he drinks the entire thing and runs his functioning hand through his hair and then says to her,"I can do this, Nat. Together, we can do this. We can't let Novikov get away from us. He only sticks his head out every three or four years. Let's just give the liquid stuff one more chance. It worked this morning. I felt better for a while after taking it, I swear to God I did."

She doesn't answer him right away.

Clint's worn himself out.

He lays down on the couch and holds his hand out for her.

"Please help me do this. You _know_ why we need to take this guy down. I can't do this without you. We're the only ones who have an opportunity to get close enough to him."

She lowers her head but doesn't pull her hand away from him.

Clint 's going to kill himself through neglect and she's evidently going to help him because as strong as she is, Natasha cannot abandon him and she will not betray him. She gave it her best shot, just like she always does, and most times she hits the target but this time she missed and Clint isn't going to agree to call Fury and he isn't going to agree with her, that saving him is worth aborting the mission.

Maybe she's being silly. Maybe she's being overly dramatic about his wound. Maybe he's right. Just a little more time is all he needs. He's never let her down. If he swears he can make it...

She lifts her head and says quietly, "I'll get the medicine."

And she does so and she helps Clint sit up long enough to take it and then he keeps his promise and drinks another glass of water, which he ends up vomiting five minutes later, a slimy puke of water and the color orange.

So much for the fever reducer.

She gives him another half dose of the stuff, estimating how much he may have absorbed before vomiting and then she sits on the couch with his head on her lap and Jadvyga brings her a bucket of tepid water and this is how Natasha finds herself, using the primitive method of wet wash clothes on skin in an attempt to cool Clint down.

He will sleep for hours, through the lunch he promised to eat and the end of the ice storm and more of Jadvyga's prayers over his head and Natasha's periodic pacing and every single noise in the shack, he'll sleep right through it all.

Natasha misses Phil Coulson so much, she feels for the first time in so long, she might allow herself to cry.

She needs Phil.

What she gets instead is Tony Stark.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jadvyga hides behind her language barrier and pretends to be sweet and innocent but she is no fool.

She knows that many of her visitors have most likely taken lives or are actively plotting to do so.

Her home is not a sanctuary for prey.

It is a hostel for predators.

This arrangement, her odd little boarding house for secretive Americans and occasionally British ones, began when the Soviets moved into her country in the forties and Jadvyga lost men in her life, her father her grandfather, and three uncles, to Siberia for reasons that the authorities refused to reveal.

Then her husband died fighting them and took two of their children with him. And she gave up hope when she buried them in the ground.

Months later, when she was far along with her third child, a man appeared one day, sitting on the beach with a torn parachute beside him. He made a motion with his hands, praying hands, but tucked them under one side of his face and she realized he wasn't asking her to pray with him.

He was asking her for a place to sleep.

He held up money and lifted a single index finger to his lips, the universal sign for, 'Hey, what do you say we just keep this quiet.'

Jadvyga was hungry and poor. Her husband had left her without funds.

She agreed to allow the parachute man to spend the night and she locked herself in her bedroom and stayed there all night while the man made himself at home with the rest of the house. He left the next morning, leaving a stack of cash on her table and a note.

Her first American boarder and her first lesson in English, "Thank you."

He was back the next week with a lot more money and a dead local communist leader.

She looked the other way as he buried the body among the pine trees behind her home.

He had friends and they sometimes stayed at her little shack on the edge of Palanga and visitors came and went and sometimes reappeared and she thinks, a few more bodies here and there, but no one ever hurt her or threatened her and she was able to feed her third son well and clothe him and took care of him, until the ungrateful little bastard left her because their lifestyle wasn't enough for him.

He was too good for the edge of the sea. He wanted the city life.

Be gone.

She is better without him.

But a part of Jadvyga worries that she is cursed because of these violent people she has harbored over the years.

Maybe that is why almost all the men in her life died and her one living child wants nothing to do with her.

Maybe the bodies in the pines want their revenge and fair share.

These are the dark things that Jadvyga is thinking about on the freezing late afternoon hours of December 2oth, 2012 as she watches the red haired woman take care of Jadvyga's favorite guest, the one who calls himself John but no, that's not right. He does not look like a John and she knows his real name is Clint because she's heard the woman whisper it many times throughout their stays, but never more so than this visit, when he came into the house bloody and pale.

Jadvyga is concerned that he will die tonight, this very nice young man who has the same shiny blue eyes as her dead middle son.

She was raised in Christianity like everyone around her, but her grandmother taught her the pagan myths that cling to the rural areas of Lithuania, the last European country to fall to the Roman Catholic Church. Her grandmother told her that many, many things can be blended, even what one believes, like the ingredients of a cake, to produce something that can feed the body. So Jadvyga believes in the Christian devil and assumes he has the power of the pagan gods to walk the Earth when he will and she worries sometimes, that her decades of secretive guests have built the devil a playground in the pines.

All of these concerns are swirling around in her head on this frigid, ice covered, December night. Her favorite visitor feverish and pale on the couch, long dead men of her family, her children's lost lives, and the devil that might soon come for her and show her own burial spot among the pine trees for looking the other way and taking murderers' money.

Imagine what Jadvyga was thinking when Tony arrives on her doorstep, dressed as Iron Man because his freaking company jet couldn't keep traversing the sky with its wings weighed down with ice. So Tony had to fly in the suit the rest of the way to Lithuania on this miserable night and that very same said suit is still trying to de-ice a glistening coating of cold off itself.

Tony tries to be friendly.

He flips his mask open and gives a half-hearted wave to the ancient old woman who answers his impatient knocking.

Jadvyga screams a piercing scream and runs from the tall red iron demon at her door.

"Velnias atėjo man!"

The devil has come for me.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To be continued...lots of Tony next chapter.


End file.
